Have you ever wondered while playing GTA 5 where the power poles in Los Santos lead? Me neither, but the author of the YouTube channel Any Austin, who is known for looking for where rivers flow in Skyrim and calculating the unemployment rate in provincial cities, decided to check the realism of the power system of virtual Los Angeles.
Austin began his research by looking at how realistically the buildings in Los Santos were connected to the power grid. In the game, you can see both quite plausible connections to the utility networks of buildings and comical cases when a high-voltage wire sticks right into the wall of a trailer.
Next, Austin decided to follow the large power transmission towers, which eventually led him to a substation on the outskirts of Los Santos. In the same area, the blogger found the first inaccuracy: at a certain point the line splits and one of its turns simply leads into a dead end.
For a more professional look, Any Austin invited Grady Hillhouse, a real engineer from the Practical Engineering channel. He explained that although at first glance the substations in GTA 5 look very realistic, if you look closely, it becomes clear that it all simply doesn't make sense. Virtual substations lack the necessary equipment, and some structures remain unrecognizable even to an electrician.
Austin followed the power line across the entire map until he found a thermal power plant far in the north of San Andreas, from which all the electricity to Los Santos comes.
The blogger summarized that although the power system in GTA 5 turned out to be far from reality, it is simply magical that Rockstar still took care that the wires in the city not only did not lead anywhere, but even showed a plausible engineering system at first glance.